Bishops and Politics: the Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580*

Bishops and Politics: The Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580* José Pedro Paiva University of Coimbra Centro de História da Sociedade e da Cultura [email protected] Abstract Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “field”, this essay assumes that there was no single “Church position” during Portugal's dynastic crisis of 1578-81: Portugal's Church was an institution encompassing a large number of different agencies, each containing a huge number of very different agents (from a social, cultural, economic and even religious perspective) struggling for power and influence and disputing control over material, spiritual and symbolic goods. Therefore, my purpose is to explain the various and changing ways that the different prelates of Portugal's thirteen mainland dioceses responded to the acute political problem of the royal succession between 1578 and 1581, and how the crown candidates tried to obtain their support. Keywords Church History, Bishops, Portuguese dynastic crisis of 1580, Political history, Religious ‘field’ Resumo Partindo do conceito de "campo" tal como formulado por Pierre Bourdieu, este estudo assume que não existiu uma posição unitária da Igreja no agitado processo político que marcou a vida portuguesa nos anos da crise dinástica (1578-1581). A Igreja portuguesa era uma instituição constituída por várias instâncias e organismos, englobando diferentes agentes, tanto do ponto de vista social, como económico, cultural e até religioso, os quais lutavam por poder e influência e disputavam a posse de bens materiais, espirituais e simbólicos. Em face desta perspectiva, a intenção central da análise aqui apresentada é explicar como é que cada um dos bispos que ocuparam as 13 dioceses do reino de Portugal se posicionaram e actuaram no contexto da vida política portuguesa, entre 1578 e 1581, e como é que os candidatos à sucessão da Coroa portuguesa em 1580 tentaram obter o seu apoio Pala vras-chave História da Igreja; Bispos; União Ibérica; História político-religiosa; Campo religioso * I wish to thank my friend and American colleague William Monter for his assistance in improving the English of my original draft. e-JPH, Vol. 4, number 2, Winter 2006 Paiva Bishops and Politics: The Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580 Introduction Although recent Portuguese historiography on the early modern period has rarely emphasized the importance of the political activities undertaken by bishops, it is commonly acknowledged that they were deeply engaged in politics throughout the sixteenth century. Some prelates even played leading roles in the political decision-making process, through their presence at the king’s court (which was gradually becoming the center of Portugal’s political arena), through the seats they occupied in such central councils and tribunals of the monarchy as the Royal Council, Council of State, Mesa da Consciência e Ordens,1 and Desembargo do Paço,2 and through their writings or sermons. The high cultural level and academic training that some of them possessed, the religious prestige and symbolical importance of their episcopal functions, the effectiveness of their episcopal bureaucratic apparatus and the territorialisation of their power, the deep interpenetration between politics and theology (some authors even use the expression ‘political theology’ to describe it) – all these things made them a very important elite. Consequently, monarchs were perfectly aware of the importance of the Church, and particularly the bishops who occupied the leading positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in reinforcing royal authority within their realm. The concept of confessionalization, proposed by Heinz Schilling (Schilling 2001), and the notion of social disciplining applied by Wolfgang Reinhard and Paolo Prodi (Reinhard 1994 and Prodi 1994) are generally very useful for understanding the key role played by the Church in early modern politics and state-building processes. In the light of these considerations, it seems useful to analyze episcopal behavior during the Portuguese political crisis of 1580. Yet this topic has seldom received extensive attention from historians studying the Portuguese dynastic crisis which followed the death of King Sebastião on 4 August 1578. Excluding Queiroz Velloso, who briefly mentioned it in a book published exactly sixty years ago (Velloso 1946: 172-173), and more recently Fernando Bouza Alvarez (Bouza Alvarez 1987), most historians dealing with this question have restricted their remarks to brief considerations about the role of the Church in general, ignoring the individual position of each specific bishop. Conversely, a few studies have been concerned only with the particular attitudes of individual bishops; for example, Bartolomeu dos Mártires, the famous archbishop of Braga, or Jerónimo Osório, bishop of Algarve (Rolo 1964, Serrão 1964 and Pinho 1993). The classical and dominant thesis argues that the Portuguese Church was split in 1580. What is usually called the upper clergy (bishops and prelates governing major religious orders - with the exception of the Jesuits) tended from the beginning to support Philip II, the king of Castile, based on the notion that for both economic and religious purposes, he offered the best solution for the kingdom. However, the majority of the clergy, socially recruited from amongst non-nobles, strongly opposed the solution of a foreign king wearing the crown of Portugal and tended to adhere to D. António, the Prior of Crato, an illegitimate son of the infant D. Luís (see, for example, Godinho 1978: 383-384; Marques 1986: 42-43 and Polónia 2005: 224-225). João Marques made some effort to justify and explain the attitudes of the upper clergy. According to him, the support they gave to Philip II arose from several causes: their family ties to the nobility (a social group that largely preferred Philip II); their fear of social and religious transformations; their general conservatism; pressure on them from agents of the king of Spain; 1 Council created in 1532 to advise the king on religious matters. 2 Appellate tribunal with jurisdiction over criminal and civil justice. e-JPH, Vol. 4, number 2, Winter 2006 2 Paiva Bishops and Politics: The Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580 and especially due to the advantages they hoped to gain by supporting the most powerful candidate to the crown, simultaneously perceived as the ‘Catholic king’ and the greatest defender of the Catholic religion, threatened at that time by both Protestant heretics and the Turks (Marques 1986: 43). More recently, Fernando Bouza has argued that if it is beyond any doubt that the lower clergy in general opposed the idea of a foreign king, and issued propaganda all over the country, especially from the pulpits, against the Habsburg monarch, with widespread acceptance of a popular state (a topic very well studied by João Marques in 1986), it is no longer sustainable that bishops were strongly engaged as a group in defense of Philip II’s candidacy. Bouza demonstrated that during the dynastic crisis, although the Portuguese bishops never strongly opposed Philip II’s candidacy (excluding the unique case of the bishop of Guarda, who always supported the Prior of Crato), they were not open and enthusiastic supporters of it. They only changed their positions after a difficult set of negotiations, undertaken by Cristóvão de Moura and Pedro Girón, Duke of Ossuna, assured them that the Castilian monarch would preserve all the privileges that the Portuguese Church had enjoyed before 1580. Bouza thus implies that an historical process occurred, during which the episcopal position underwent a transformation (Bouza Alvarez 1987, II, 558-569 and 579-590; Bouza Alvarez 2005: 118-120). All the above-mentioned studies, even if some of them tried to distinguish positions assumed by particular bishops, take for granted that it is possible to define a general position sustained by the Portuguese church hierarchy during this complex political process, corresponding to the attitudes expressed by the majority of its bishops. A good example of this methodological approach is an essay by Jacinto Monteiro entitled The attitude of the Church and the loss of Portugal’s independence in 1580 (A atitude da Igreja e a perda da independência de Portugal em 1580) (Monteiro 1965). I suggest, however, that it is impossible to understand this process correctly by assuming that there was any single “Church position”, and that it resulted from some common point of view shared by all bishops, acting as a group representing its corporate interests. Firstly, it is worth remembering that the Portuguese Church had no institution or agency where its general position could be debated and afterwards presented as a collectively-agreed, institutional policy. The political assemblies of Portugal’s three different social estates (including the clergy) known as the Cortes did not function in that way. Secondly, they lacked consensual positions on almost every major issue; the concept of “field” (Bourdieu 1971; Bethencourt 1984) applies here, because the Portuguese Church was an institution encompassing a large number of different agencies, each containing a huge number of very different agents (from a social, cultural, economic and even religious viewpoint) which fought for power and influence, disputing control over innumerable material, spiritual and symbolic goods. One implication of this approach is that, within what is usually called "the Church" (in the singular), there co-existed very different strategies and interests among the various institutions, agents and groups that comprised it. Periods of deep rupture, during which tensions emerge more obviously, provide good moments for testing this assumption. The Portuguese political crisis of 1580 is one such privileged conjuncture. Accordingly, this essay will try to detect and explain the ways in which the different individuals who were prelates of Portuguese dioceses in the years from 1578-1581 faced the acute political problem of the royal succession, and how the crown candidates, particularly the one who ultimately won the prize - Philip II, tried to obtain their support. 1. The problem e-JPH, Vol.

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